Helen P. Blavatsky, who has dropped her title of Countess, and even her conventional
one of Madame, and who constantly alludes to herself in the third person, as
"H.P.B.," is about leaving America, as she says, forever. A very damp reporter
found his way into the pleasant French flat at Eighth avenue and Forty-seventh street this
morning, and his ring was answered by a colored servant, who expressed serious doubts as
to whether her mistress would see any one at so early an hour. The interviewer was,
however, ushered into a breakfast room, which was in a very disordered condition, and
invited to a seat on a vacant stool. The disorder was a necessary result of
yesterdays auction sale, and the only semblance of occupancy left were an uncleared
breakfast table and three human occupants. Colonel Olcott, the new hierophant of the
Arya-Samaj, sat at the table busily making memoranda in a note-book and burning his
handsome moustache with a half-finished cigar that struggled ineffectually to reach beyond
the outskirts of his beard. A male companion sat Eastern fashion on a bench under the
window and read a morning paper, which he held in one hand, while he twisted one end of
his moustache with the other. On the wall were leaves formed in emblematic designs,
Rosecrusian or otherwise, and an Oriental landscape of the same material, filled with
elephants, serpents, monkeys and other denizens of the typical jungle.

When the reporter was finally ushered into Mme. Blavatskys own room, he found
that lady seated at the end of a letter and tobacco laden table, twisting a fragrant
cigarette from a quantity of loose tobacco of a famous Turkish brand. The room was the
inner temple of the Lamasery, which has become so widely known in recent years. A
highly-polished and highly ugly idol, doubtless many years unworshipped, sat with the
stolidity of long habit, on the mantleshelf, and in the centre of the room, on a platform
delicately constructed from an old barrel, surmounted by a zinc stove plate, was mounted
the marvellously designed and artistic treasure house of Arya-Samaj.

The reporter said: "And so you are going to leave America?"

"Yes, and the Lamasery, where I have spent so many happy, happy hours. I am sorry
to leave these rooms, although there is little to regret about them now," glancing
about at the bared floors and walls, "but I am glad to get away from your country.
You have liberty, but that is all, and of that you have too much, too much! Do you wonder
I am anxious to leave it when you know how I was received and the treatment I have met?
They said I was a spiritualist, a heathen, a believer in all manner of impossible things;
that I was an adventuress and had neither title nor family; that I was a felon and a
forger; that I had been married seven times and had murdered six of my husbands; that I
was a free lover and had never been married; that I was the mistress of Pio Nono, and that
I came here a fugitive from justice. Think of it all! They never stopped to think that I
was an old woman and not likely to adopt a vile life which had not been mine when I was
young, that I have been a bitter hater of Pio Nono and the Catholic religion all my life.
Then the reporters came and asked me how I was, how much I was worth, and wanted to see
inside my mouth to count my teeth and see whether they were genuine or not. Will you have
a cigarette?"

As soon as the reporter could recover from the surprise at this sudden turn in the
conversation he signified his willingness to smoke with his hostess, who thereupon
discovered that she had no fresh tobacco and called to a servant to go for a supply.
Colonel Olcott, however, appeared with ulster, hat and umbrella and volunteered to secure
the desired "long cut."

The reporter paid a friendly compliment to the hierophants generous good nature,
and asked Mme. Blatavsky: "How with your dislike for America, did you come to abandon
your Russian citizenship and become a resident of New York?"

"Ah, you have liberty. I had none. I could not be protected by Russian consuls and
so I will be protected by American consuls. It has cost me much. When I took out my papers
here, it cost me $40,000. I had forgotten to secure it first and they stopped it en route.
It is not a small sum to lose, but I have still other property in Russia which I shall
also lose. Still I shall live. I correspond for three papers in Russia, at Moscow and
Novnj-Novgorod, and I shall soon have one in St. Petersburg. They pay me liberally. One of
them gives me 120 roubles a month, but, of course, I have to be careful what I say. They
make me a great deal of trouble. There was M. de Bodisco, who always got himself written
Count de Bodisco, but who never was a count, and I dont believe he was ever in
Russia. He spoke Russian like a Spanish pig, and his French was extremely bad -- for a
Russian. He told me I had no right to come to America, and that he would not allow me to
have money sent through him. Then he advised me to buy a place on Long Island, and when I
had paid $3,000 for it the woman to whom I had paid the money sold it again and went away,
and I found I was helpless, because I was not an American citizen and could not hold real
estate. Now I shall have the protection of my citizenship both here and abroad."

"When shall you leave?"

"I do not know. I never knew."

"There!" broke in the lady; "you see what a dear, philanthropic man he
is. He will not even allow the servant to go out in the storm, if he can help it."

"I do not know what I shall do an hour beforehand, I am all ready to start and am
only waiting for a telegram. Then I shall go in three hours." Here the tobacco
arrived, and she continued, as she twisted a sample of fresh cigarettes: "I know
neither the time nor the vessel, but it will be very soon and very secretly. No one shall
know when I go. I am going first to Liverpool and London, where we have branch
theosophical societies, to whom I must take their charters and with whom I must arrange
other matters. Then to Paris and one or two other places, and from Marseilles or Brindisi
I shall go direct to Bombay. Then I am going to Northeastern India, where the head of the
order is, and where I shall obey whatever orders they may give and go where I am told. Oh!
how glad I shall be to see my dear Indian home again." and as she arose and wrapped a
morning gown of strange design about her, she looked very much the Oriental priestess
which she claims she is -- not.